Harriet's Homecoming

I've covered a lot of things in almost 20 years in this trade, but one of the most moving, touching ceremonies I ever covered was Saturday night when the remains of suffragist Harriet Upton Taylor were returned to her home in Warren on Mahoning Avenue N.W.

Maybe it was the goregous weather, golden sunshine and leaves changing colors, or the fact that a California Superior Court judge traveled from Pasadena to Warren for the ceremony.

Upton was forced to move from her home during the Great Depression because of her finances. She lived with a cousin in California, where she died in 1945 and was buried until Saturday, when an effort by the association that bears her name capped off an effort of over a year to have her ashes returned home.

The ceremony was poignant in its simplicity; mourners, some dressed in Victorian costumes, walked across Mahoning Avenue from the Woman's Park next to City Hall to her garden, where her urn was buried. There were no cell phones, radios or video screens; just a small crowd and the sound of bagpipes.

It is something I will remember for a long time.